


The Magic Flute

by okapi



Category: Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (TV Russia), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alpha Sherlock Holmes, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Case Fic, Drug Use, First Time, Fisting, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Music, Inspired by Opera, M/M, Masturbation, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Omega John Watson, Omega Verse, Oral Sex, Suicidal Thoughts, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:28:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23260999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi
Summary: Holmes must tend to Watson's heat and clear his name.Omegaverse. Alpha Holmes/Omega Watson. Old Russian Holmes (aka Livanov Holmes/Solomin Watson) with some elements of canon plot.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 39
Kudos: 115





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [13jarble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/13jarble/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** Watson is suicidal at the beginning.
> 
>  **The dog:** Canon Toby is a mix of spaniel and lurcher (meaning, sighthound). Russian Toby is an old English bulldog and definitely not a scenthound. Nevertheless, in this story, he is a scenthound. It's an alternate universe. Breeds of humans as well as breeds of dogs. :)
> 
>  **Spoilers:** The case plot (but not the motivation or person responsible) was taken from episodes 3 & 4 (as they are divided in US TV) of Season I of _Vienna Blood_ as well as book two of the Max Libermann Papers series by Frank Tallis, _Vienna Blood_.
> 
> Some knowledge of Mozart's opera _The Magic Flute_ might enhance your experience, but smut is smut. :)

I paused, my hands gripping the splintered edge of the little boat. The rucksack on my back shifted as I looked up. Still afternoon, the moon had not yet risen, yet I knew, instinctively, where it would appear. I set my eyes on that point in the sky and prayed.

_O Mother Moon, O Mother Night, forgive my weakness. I cannot bear this burden, not in this place which abhors the fruits of your womb. Take me back. Or if it is not my lot to return to you now, give me strength to endure what lies ahead, and return me to these shores, but only when this ordeal has passed._

How much changes in a day!

Yesterday, at this hour, I had been looking forward to celebrating the end of a case with Holmes. The celebration was something we had been anticipating for many days, a night at the opera. And what a very fine night it had been! Mozart’s _The Magic Flute_!

The night had not been without its teacup drama, though. No sooner had I settled in my seat than a call for a doctor in the house went up, and I answered it. The touring opera company was Austrian, but, much lauded in the press, three English girls, the sisters Weber, had been cast to play the Three Spirits of Sarastro. The audience was destined to be disappointed because I soon discovered the girls were in no fit state to perform on any stage but their own sickbeds. By the time I had made my evaluation, their family physician had arrived. I gave him my report and gave the poor feverish dears over to the care of their worried parents. Then I returned to my seat beside Holmes.

It had still been a magnificent production! Oh, what a night!

But how much changes in a day! I exhaled a weary breath. 

A day ago, my only worries had been, in hindsight, trivial and domestic, accustoming myself to the odd ways of the new housemaid, which included hysteria when I was conscripted to slay a garden snake that had found its way into Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen. Fresh from victory with the snake, I had finally persuaded that good woman to have someone come and see about the sitting room fireplace. The last problem had been set to rights by the time Holmes and I had returned from the opera. We’d waltzed across the threshold of 221 Baker Street into our cosy rooms, serenading each other.

How patently ordinary my life had been yesterday! How absurdly happy I was!

And now? I was miserable. So miserable I was quite prepared for my life to end. Or come very near it.

I sighed.

There was nothing for it.

Golden hair and bronzed skin did not make me a Child of the Sun. Inside, I was a Child of the Moon, and without warning or wish, somehow—but, how? a part of me kept asking—my sleeping nature had been awakened. It was a genie that could not be put back in the bottle. It was a monster that could not be tamed. It could only be exhausted and endured in exile.

Yes, there was nothing for it but to banish myself. As brave as I was in many respects, I could not stay and face the consequences of my impending condition. I shuddered at the thought of what would be done about me, with me, to me, if I were caught. The laws were wrong, but I was in no condition to challenge them now.

I hadn’t time, for starters. My body was churning. I had mere hours to get as far out to sea as the winds and currents would take me.

Nothing for it, I repeated to myself for the last time and pushed the little boat father into the water.

Suddenly, there was a rustling in the underbrush!

I had the irrational notion that a dragon-serpent, like the one that had menaced Tamino in the opening of _The Magic Flute_ , was about to spring.

Just what I needed, I lamented silently, a Child of the Moon with an adder at my heel!

But what bounded from the undergrowth was not an operatic reptile, but a very English canine, snuffling and snorting. Its strong white legs and thick white trunk were haphazardly adorned with downy feathers.

I had to laugh. It was a comical entrance worthy of applause.

“Papageno!”

The bulldog lumbered towards me and began to circle me excitedly. He swung his wrinkled jowls back and forth and woofed.

The full significance of the situation was quickly brought home to me. I had to get to sea before this noisy creature brought near someone who would foil my escape. Or take me captive and turn me over to the public health authorities!

One word stopped me from launching myself into the boat and taking off.

“Watson!”

The dog had his teeth gently but firmly attached to my trousers leg.

“His name is Toby,” called a familiar voice. “But for the moment, I agree Papageno suits him better, for this stalwart bird-catcher has caught me a prize before it had a chance to take flight. Of course, as any good bird-catcher, he is inclined to be distracted by beaks and wings. He was forced by his nature to make a brief investigation of a seabird’s nest before returning to the scent! Thus, our slight delay and his costume.”

Holmes appeared, and a wave of relief washed over me. Then I shook my head, sharply, stubbornly, in much the same manner as the dog had, and dispelled the foolish notion.

There was no relief to be had, and there was no time for drawing room conversations about the charms of adorable canines!

“Oh, Holmes,” I pleaded, an icy fear gripping my heart, “you must let me go!”

“Watson, your note wounded me. I have solved problems for kings and paupers, why do you think I cannot solve yours?”

“What about your new case?”

“I repeat, with clarification: I have solved problems for kings and paupers— _at the same time_ —why do you think I cannot solve yours?”

“But my problem has nothing to do with crime!” wailed I, then added bitterly, “No matter what the authorities claim.” I looked down at Toby, whose jaws still held firm to my trousers leg. “Oh, let me go,” I said plaintively, addressing Holmes and the dog. “It’s for the best! And I really do like these trousers,” I added.

“Hold him, Toby,” ordered Holmes, and Toby snorted back that he intended to do nothing else.

The wind shifted.

One lungful of sea air and my mouth fell open.

_No, it couldn’t possibly be Holmes that I smelled!_

“Holmes!” I cried, turning to stare at him, wide-eyed.

“Ah, finally, my dear man.”

“You!”

“All this time, and you never suspected that I was an unbonded Alpha.”

“Dear God, do you think I would’ve agreed to share rooms with you if you were?” I turned back towards the boat, gripping its edge even tighter. I thought I might faint. I remember the left jab Holmes had once landed on my jaw. That was a mere flutter compared to this blow. I was stunned. “How could I have been so bloody stupid?” I asked no one in particular.

“I take a very effective powder every morning just like you do, but I take mine dissolved in water before rising, and you take yours in your morning tea. By the way, you are not as stealth about the dosing of yourself as you believe. The quickness of your ‘and doth not deceive my h’eye!”

“I took my preparation this morning just as always!” I protested, still reeling from the revelation that Holmes was an unbonded Alpha. It made perfect sense, of course, but I’d never suspected, not once.

“I know,” said Holmes. “So, logically, we must conclude that there was either something wrong with the powder or there is something wrong with you.”

“There wasn’t anything wrong with me this morning! But, by Jove, there is now! I have hours, Holmes, mere hours, until I will no longer recognise myself. I will be an animal. I won’t be able to flee then. I won’t be able to do anything.”

Holmes’s voice was soft. “Yes, even in my neutered state, I know that. Your scent is changing. That’s why dear Toby was so successful in tracking you down. In your anxious haste, you left behind a sweat-stained handkerchief. It had your scent upon it,” he removed a square of cambric from his pocket, “What was your plan, Watson? To go out to sea and suffer by yourself?”

“Until I drowned,” I answered miserably.

Holmes made a noise of disapprobation. “Why didn’t you come to me?”

“It’s your duty to turn me in.”

Holmes laughed mirthlessly. “You think I would hand you over to the public health authorities? So that you can be caged in Bedlam’s filth and violated for three days? You’re mad! I don’t take pleasure in the torture of my worst enemies, much less my dearest friend! You do me a grave injustice by your presumptions, Watson. Truly, I’m wounded.”

I spoke in the flat voice of an automaton, rattling off the official position. “Unbonded Omegas in heat are a disgrace to order and the purity of the Empire. They must be contained for the sake of welfare of the population at large.”

Holmes huffed. “You don’t believe that bilge! And neither do I! You are the same Watson I go to the opera with! The same Watson I solve crimes with! The same Watson I share my tea and toast with!”

“There is no remedy, Holmes! It’s an impossible situation!”

“Only highly improbable, my dear man. Will you at least do me the favour of listening, please?”

“All right.”

I let go of the boat, turned towards Holmes, and crossed my arms over my chest.

With an order from Holmes, Toby released my cuff. Then the dog hurried back to Holmes, who squatted and offered treats from his pocket and words of praise and scratches behind the ears.

I waited.

Without pausing in his ministrations to Toby or even lifting his gaze, Holmes said, “My proposal is to use the public health codes and regulations to our own advantage: to have 221B Baker Street put under an official seventy-two-hour quarantine.”

“Quarantine?” I echoed.

“It’s not so out of the range of possibilities. Bessie, the housemaid, as you know, has been ill; her cousin has been taking her place for the past few days. And there’s the contact you had with the Weber sisters yesterday evening. I’ve had a brief word with their doctor. They are very ill young ladies, indeed. I have contacted Mycroft, and he is arranging the order. Then, no one will disturb our residence for at least three days. The door will be marked. Not even the tradesmen will dare to call.”

“Mrs. Hudson?”

“Is a beta and loves you as much as I do. She is stockpiling the fortress as we speak, with provisions and, I suspect, arms.”

I could not help but smile at the image.

“And she is prepared to stand guard, with our vigilant Papageno,” continued Holmes, patting the flank of the bulldog, “when I am not in attendance.”

I frowned. “You’ll be ‘in attendance’?”

Holmes looked up and gave one of his rare, sweet smiles. “If you’ll have me,” he said. “My knowledge of Omega heats is, admittedly, theoretical, but I have exhausted the literature on the subject, and I have the necessary equipment, in good working order, I assure you.”

“You don’t know how overwhelming a heat can be, Holmes. You may find yourself out of your depth.”

Holmes snorted, and Toby did likewise. Really, it was uncanny how the two favoured each other.

“Do you remember the first time we sparred, Watson?”

“I have been thinking of that, too.” One corner of my mouth twitched. “It was in the beginning. I didn’t know you were a detective and a master of disguise. I thought you were a fiend and a murderer.”

“You weren’t wholly wrong. I just wasn’t the kind of fiend you believed me to be. It was a good fight.”

“You won. Left jab.”

“But it was a good fight.”

“I ended up in your arms.”

“Just so.” Holmes’s eyes twinkled, then his face fell, his expression sober and grave. “However, I must warn you that I must tend to this case as well as solve the mystery of your heat suppressant failure. And it won’t be easy. It will require some accommodation on your part and deviation from what I suspect is the norm in an Omega heat. My proposal is this: to be your Alpha at night when you need me most, and by day, while you’re sleeping, to be a sleuth, in disguise, of course. Sherlock Holmes, like all the 221 Baker Street household, will be under quarantine.”

“But when will you sleep?” cried I, wincing slightly at the mothering quality of my tone.

“It is three days, my dear man. Our Lord Jesus Christ suffered no less.”

I chuckled despite myself. “Please don’t bring up religion at a time like this, Holmes.”

Holmes carefully placed his knees on the ground and assumed a pose halfway between supplication and prayer. Despite my protests, I immediately conjured the Garden of Gethsemane.

“I will not lose you to Bedlam, Watson,” Holmes said solemnly. “Or to the sea.”

“I am a Child of the Moon, Holmes.”

“And I’m of the Sun, my dear Watson. Neither was our choice.”

“You will lose all respect for me.”

“Never.”

“You run the risk of scandal, arrest, and imprisonment.”

“My dear Watson, may I remind you that the profession I’ve chosen, indeed, the one to which I’m best suited, is not without such risks?”

“You think someone deliberately tampered with my powders?”

“I suspect so.”

“Why?”

“Distraction.”

“Well, it worked!” exclaimed I bitterly. “How was it done?”

“That requires investigation. You will be sleeping during the day; that will be give me an opportunity to discover the truth. It may, _may_ , I say, be related to this new case. But that is pure conjecture at this point. Come, Watson, if we are the set all of this in motion we must return to town and get you into seclusion. Your scent is changing fast. I will tell you about the case during the journey back to Baker Street.” His voice became even softer. “During the journey _home_.”

I turned back to the boat and the sea. “You think me a coward for running away?”

“No. I do not know what I would do in your shoes. I might very well pick this path. But I think, I believe, the alternative I’m offering is a better path. I think I can help you. I want to help you.”

I looked over my shoulder. Did Holmes really know what he was agreeing to? “You want to fuck for three nights?” I asked bluntly.

Holmes twisted his lips in a wry smirk and gave me an admiring glance. “To be quite frank, with you, my dear Watson, the prospect doesn’t seem like a hardship.”

I blushed and laughed and pushed the boat away from me.

“You are mad, Holmes.”

“So are you. But the world is madder than us both. Come.”

There was a long moment of silence while I warred with myself, with my many selves.

_Child of the Moon, doctor, soldier, faithful companion, friend._

Holmes waited patiently, silently, Toby at his heels.

I looked at that point in the sky and asked,

_What shall I do, Mother?_

The answer arrived on a briny breeze.

_Trust him, my Child._

I turned and closed the distance between Holmes and me.

Holmes held out his hand.

I took it.

Toby woofed.

I released Holmes’s hand and slid my arm into his, gave over my rucksack, and allowed myself to be led away.

“Cab’s waiting,” said Holmes as we walked.

“Indeed? You were very confident of the success of your endeavour,” I remarked dryly.

“I knew our good Papageno would catch you. As for the rest,” Holmes shrugged, “I had faith that my sensible friend Watson would allow his sensible friend Holmes to help him in his time of need, and that a Child of the Moon would trust that a Child of the Sun not to fail him.” He squeezed my arm and for the first time, the sensation of certain doom which had been weighing so heavily upon chest felt a bit lighter.

Toby trotted along beside us.

I looked at the dog, then caught Holmes’s eye.

Holmes immediately launched into song.

“ _Der Vogelfänger_ _bin ich ja. Stets lustig heisa hopsasa_!”

I whistled on cue. Toby woofed.

“Holmes, we must get some magic bells for our Papageno,” I said when we reached the cab.

“He shall have them! It’s one of the items on Mrs. Hudson’s lengthy list.”

* * *

“No, Holmes!” I cried and tried to throw myself from the moving cab. “Give me over to Bedlam! Now! Take me there! Driver!”

Holmes held me fast and whispered in my ear.

“Watson, calm yourself, and it’s best at this point not to bring any undue attention to our behaviour.” Holmes put his hand over my mouth and ordered, “Toby. Sit. On. Watson.”

The dog crawled into my lap, his full poundage acting as anchor.

“But I thought you going to Scotland Yard to be briefed on a new case!” I hissed when Holmes released my mouth.

“So I was.”

I snorted. “No, you were going to be interrogated as a prime suspect in a massacre!”

“No one at Scotland Yard honestly believes I killed the brothel owner and her three workers.”

“Your name was in last in the registry. Someone saw a man matching your description enter the brothel around the time they are believed to have been killed. Men have been hanged for less, Holmes!”

“Stupid men have been hanged for less! Let me point out to you that also recorded in the registry was a William Shakespeare, a Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, two Napoleons, and three Lord Nelsons! There are plenty of men in the metropolis who are over six feet tall with lean builds, dark hair, and hawk-like noses. And how am I supposed to have made it to that unfamiliar establishment, slaughtered four women I do not know and with whom I have no quarrel, then have attended the opera in plain sight of hundreds without a spot of blood on me? Ah, even Lestrade knows it is a crude attempt.”

“You should be focusing all your attention on clearing your name! Hand me over to the authorities, Holmes. I’ll only be a burden. Your life, your freedom, your reputation is at stake!”

“And yours aren’t? No.”

Our eyes met, and I heard a voice in my heart.

_Trust him, my Child._

His hand stole into mine and squeezed my fingers.

I surrendered.

“Together, Watson,” Holmes said in a husky voice. “I need you with me, in full spirit if not in full flesh. If I turned you over, as you request, what would become of me? Knowing you were caged, tortured, well, I’d be a worthless shadow of myself, unable to concentrate on the simplest clues and offer any defense. I’d be certain prey. And then whoever is behind this would surely win.”

“Win what?”

Holmes shook his head once. “I don’t know, but it seems personal, very personal. I need you, Watson. You’re my whetstone, my fixed point.”

“Then I’m yours,” I mumbled.

“Good.” 

Toby licked at my face.

I had regained my composure by the time we reached Baker Street, which was fortunate, as we were greeted by a highly agitated Mrs. Hudson.

“Oh, Mister Holmes, oh, Doctor Watson, oh!” she wailed.

“Mrs. Hudson, what is the matter?”

“It’s the girl! She’s run off! But,” she waved a letter at us, “it turns out she wasn’t the girl at all! Oh, I was tricked. I knew something was amiss, but I thought she was just nervous about a new placement.”

“Begin at the beginning, Mrs. Hudson,” I said. “And shall we bring all of these in?” I nodded at the crates of foodstuff.

“Oh, yes, please, Doctor, but Mister Holmes!”

“First, Mrs. Hudson, here is your helpmeet, Papageno,” he nodded to Toby and handed Mrs. Hudson the lead. Toby, your Papagena.”

Mrs. Hudson, temporarily distracted, eyed the dog and sang in exaggerated fashion, “Papa—”

“Woof, woof!” answered Toby.

“Papa—”

“Woof, woof!”

“See, Watson?” said Holmes. “A fine duet if ever there was one.”

“All right, all right,” Mrs. Hudson addressed Toby, “I’ve got plenty of chops for you, but,” the pitch of her voice rose to a screech, “Mister Holmes!”

Holmes and I moved inside, carrying a stack of three crates each. We followed Mrs. Hudson and Toby into the kitchen.

“Yes, that letter you hold no doubt says that the girl we knew as Essie was not Bessie’s cousin at all.”

Mrs. Hudson stopped, spun round, and gasped, “How did you know?”

“Watson, did you not notice something irregular in our new housemaid’s comportment?”

“Girls,” I huffed when I’d set the crates down. “I suppose she was a bit…”

“Theatrical? I’ve not seen a courtesy like that outside of a French pantomime.”

“And to think I allowed that mongoose into the bosom of our henhouse!” lamented Mrs. Hudson. “The real Essie received a note that her services weren’t wanted, and she never made the journey.”

“Where is the girl calling herself Essie now?” I asked.

“That’s the other rum business,” said Mrs. Hudson. “She disappeared late this morning!”

“Holmes, do you think…?”

“Yes. Before the light dies, I want to have a professional look at the place where you guard your powders. May I?”

I removed a small key from my watch chain and handed it to him. “The trunk. I’ll join you in a moment.”

“Very well.”

He left us.

I turned to Mrs. Hudson. That good lady may not have been a world’s famous detective, but she knew how to read a face.

She clasped my hand in both of hers. “Doctor Watson.”

“What is about to happen, Mrs. Hudson…”

“Eh,” she made a dismissive noise, “I am a woman, Doctor. Every woman knows that there are times when bodies betray us. Also, I an old woman. Spry, mind you, but old. That means that yours is not my first catastrophe, my dear. And with this trusty companion,” she released me and turned to Toby, who accepted her attention with alacrity, “I think we will defend this Baker Street castle from any siege. I have faith that Mister Holmes, and you, will take care of the rest.”

I blinked back the tears. “Thank you.”

She snorted, then said in a low, menacing voice, “Let ‘em try to take you.”

Toby woofed. 

* * *

“Look, Watson. I take it those marks are new.”

I peered through the magnifying glass. “Someone’s tampered with the lock on the trunk!”

Holmes nodded. “Not visible to the naked eye.”

“Essie? Or the girl calling herself Essie?”

“Perhaps or…”

Holmes produced a swab and drew it around the lock. He turned the cotton-tipped stick toward Watson.

“Soot.”

“The man who came about the fireplace!”

Holmes nodded. With gloved hands, he opened the trunk. The interior was divided into pigeonholes.

“Ten left,” he observed.

“Yes.”

“Did you notice any difference in the paper in which it was contained or in taste this morning?”

I shook my head.

“Nevertheless, there might be something,” Holmes hunched over the trunk, “bring me a lamp.”

I did so.

He made a noise. “No. Maybe they replaced the whole business, paper and all. It would’ve been easier. When I have time, I’ll do an examination of the rest but—”

Somewhere, Toby was breaking into loud barking.

“Get into bed, Watson,” said Holmes quickly. “And try to look as ill as possible.”

I don’t know how long it was on the clock, perhaps half an hour, but in my mind, it was years, and I worked myself up into a sweaty panic. I braced myself for the moment that the public health officials could come bursting in with officers to haul me away.

I tried to pray, but only one word came.

_Mother…_

_Mother…_

_Mother…_

“It’s all right.”

I heard the phrase in my head, but it wasn’t until its repetition that I realised it wasn’t in my head at all.

“It’s all right, Watson.”

I uncovered my face and looked toward the door.

How could he smile? In the midst of all that was going on, all that might befall both of us, how could the bastard smile?

Somehow, he kept smiling and approached and sat on the edge of the bed. “The order is filed. The notice is up. The drawbridge is raised. The sentries are readying for duty. I hear one now.”

There arrived the mingled cacophony of asthmatic snorting, the _clippity-clip_ of toenails on floorboards, and jingling bells.

“Papageno!”

Toby bounded into the room and pounced on the bed. He snuffled amongst the bedclothes then licked my face. He was followed by Mrs. Hudson, who moved in her usual spritely but deliberate pace. Her hands were full of linen, which Holmes took and placed on a far chair.

“Doctor, there’s a cold collation laid out. Eat. You’re going to need your strength, and the beast,” she shot an amused glance at Toby and waggled her eyebrows, “is keen on scraps!”

“Thank you, Mrs. Hudson. Thank you, Holmes. Thank your brother, as well, please, Holmes, when you’re able.”

I was already beginning to feel restless, eager to shirk out of my own skin, but a meal was a sensible suggestion. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and dusk was falling.

Need was already in my blood and well on its way to a degree I wouldn’t be able to ignore.

“Perimeter is secure,” said Holmes about half an hour later. I’d eschewed the suggestion of a ‘love nest’ of cushions and blankets in the sitting room. I wanted to be in my own bed, contained by the walls I knew best.

Somewhere, I heard the faint jingle of bells.

Holmes was in his dressing gown. I was in mine. Nothing else.

It was time. I was ready to claw myself to shreds but used the last of my reserve to place my hand on Holmes’s chest, at the lapel of his dressing gown, and slide that hand, trembling though it was, up to his neck.

Holmes untied the sash of his dressing gown and let the sides fall apart.

I looked down.

The lamps were burning, and I could easily see.

“Good Lord, Holmes! You did yourself a grave injustice when you said you had the necessary equipment! Now I see why you prefer the ‘homemade article’ as opposed to the Turkish bath. If you were to put this on display, even shrouded in towels, you would spend all your allotment for relaxation politely declining lascivious offers. May I touch you?”

“Not ‘you may,’ my beautiful man, you must. Your scent is…compelling, to say the very least.”

Holmes’ prick was, in a word, huge. In girth and length, it was nothing short and nothing short of extraordinary when it came to attention with a few brushes of my hand.

My body stirred to frenzy. My thighs were damp. I felt a bulbous clot of secretions ooze from my orifice.

Holmes took a step closer to me and bent to bury his face in my neck as I stroked him using dry but soft, exploratory touches. Ostensibly, I was coaxing his mouth-watering prick to hardness, gestures that it hardly required. It was at full mast within the span of three short, synchronised breaths shared by Holmes and me.

My other hand was around Holmes’s waist, caressing his lower back, then creeping down to cup a buttock. His hands were at my waist.

“I had a lover in university,” Holmes confessed. “An Omega. I did not bond with him. We’d planned to share a heat, but circumstances prevented it. Since then, I have kept myself under control through chemical means and elected to tend to my needs myself, on the rare occasion I cannot ignore them.”

“I will talk a lot of piffle, Holmes, in the next seventy-two hours but let me say that I am more than willing to help you meet your needs, any hour, any locale, any circumstance.”

“That is piffle, Watson, but I’m flattered. Let’s focus on your body’s demands for the moment.”

“Right. Holmes, you must lay me on the bed, fold my legs as tightly as they will fold, and fuck me as deeply as you can.”

I threw off my dressing gown and walked backwards towards the bed until I was on my back.

Holmes, likewise, shirked out of his silk. He followed, his thick member bobbing as he moved.

Obeying instinct, I raised my knees to my chest and spread my legs in invitation.

“May I touch you first, Watson?”

“You may,” I replied, trying to keep my tone as polite as his.

Holmes gently probed, the brought two fingers to his mouth. He nodded as if confirming a hypothesis.

I bit my lip and tried not to whimper.

“I’m sorry, Watson. I’m trying your patience. ‘Do get on with, Holmes.’”

He stepped forward, supported my thigh with his hand, then guided his prickhead to my entrance and…

“Oooooh!” I exclaimed, arching my back to meet his slow, deliberate, and wonderfully penetrating thrust. My body more than welcomed the intrusion, it gloried in it.

He folded me in half, bringing his face to mine. I cradled his jaw in both hands as he thrust.

Our bodies rocked together.

“May I kiss you, Watson?”

I couldn’t speak, but I nodded.

His lips were so soft, so tender, so full of concern. I kissed him back, trying to form a reply of reassurance, of exquisite appreciation, in the pressure, angle, and wetness of my mouth, the swipes of my tongue, the nibbles of my teeth.

“I’m good,” I eventually managed, my voice horribly shaky.

“Good.”

His whole body relaxed, the muscles softening, the tension ebbing in a kind of cascade. He looked down and holding my legs even tighter to me, began to thrust harder, deeper, faster.

This was a good Alpha fuck.

“Very good, Holmes, very good.”

My hands had migrated to his neck. They dropped to his arse, urging him on.

With a strained cry, Holmes’s hips bucked. His body stilled abruptly, but his voice was in my ear, ragged and hoarse but, as always, thick with care.

“Oh, Watson.”

“Spill it all inside me, Holmes, please, my body’s aching for it, give me everything you have.” I squeezed my internal muscles, seeking to milk his prick of the very last drop. “I need it, I crave it, can you understand?”

Holmes groaned loudly. His head dropped, hanging limp beside mine.

“Yes, I understand. Take it, Watson, take all of it, my good, good man.”

Our bodies were still locked together, and I was still reveling in the sensation, stream after stream of seed warming me, his enormous length and girth stretching me as he scratched a primordial itch.

I peppered tiny kisses about his temple, his cheek, his hair, his earlobe; all was damp with sweat. His salt on my tongue beautiful. Everything was beautiful. “Perfect. I don’t know why I ever doubted you.”

Holmes grunted and slowly, very slowly, drew his prick out of me.

I knew it wouldn’t be long before he was hard again, and I was begging for another round, but what happened next was wholly unexpected.

Holmes lifted his body from mine, but his gaze was still on the juncture between my legs. I supposed that he was intrigued by the volume of our secretions, which were gushing out of me.

I was wrong.

Without a word, he fell straight down, swallowing my prick without a cough or sputter and commencing to suck it like a king’s whore.

The noise I made was one of surprise, and perhaps Holmes interpreted it as alarm, too, for he pulled off at once and sat back on his heels on the rug.

I pushed myself to sitting. “I’m sorry. I didn’t anticipate that.”

“Does that mean you don’t wish me to?”

My lips curled in a smile. “Not at all.”

Holmes smiled, too.

I licked my lips and began, “Most Alphas…”

Holmes silenced me with a look that required no interpretation.

“I know you aren’t most Alphas,” I hastened to add. “Eventually, with several rounds, there’s enough internal stimulation to bring about my release, but, well, I’ve never known an Alpha in heat to care, one way or the other.”

Holmes took my hand in his and brought my fingers to his lips and kissed them.

“I care, Watson.”

“Well, then,” I said with an impish smirk, “as you were.”

Holmes may have had limited knowledge of penetrative sex with of an Omega, but by the way he made love to my prick, I was certain he’d had plenty of practice at fellatio.

“Jesus Christ!”

My hands were in his hair, gripping his head tightly as he bobbed and slurped. I was caught between the urge to close my eyes, throw my head back, and moan, and the desire to keep my chin to my chest and watch him, this magnificent Alpha, on his knees, pleasuring me.

I did one, then the other.

“Holmes, Holmes…”

He laced his fingers in mine, squeezing them tightly as I spent.

He sat back and swallowed.

I couldn’t help it. I followed him to the ground and kissed him, wanting, for reasons I didn’t readily understand or examine too closely, to taste myself on his lips. I was hungry, very hungry, and the kiss lasted a short eternity. He gave as good as he got.

“My magic flute makes the most wonderful music,” he murmured.

I snorted and crushed my lips into his smiling cheek. “It certainly turns sorrow to joy, Tamino.”

“How many more rounds can we expect before dawn, Watson?”

“At least three, but given how,” I dropped my voice, “compatible we seem to be, could be as many as five. I’ll eventually collapse and sleep for at least eight, maybe ten, hours.”

His eyes said something I didn’t want voiced aloud so I covered his mouth with mine.

He brought his arms around me and curled his legs in front of him and we fell together onto the rug.

“A wash, perhaps,” he mumbled against my lips, “before…”

But there wasn’t time.

“I’m so sorry, Holmes. When we’re done, I’ll wash you with my tongue like a mother cat if you just…oh.”

He was in me. He was filling me again.

“Oh, Holmes.”

“It’s remarkable, isn’t it? My proficiency at reading the changes signaled by your scent is improving after just one round.”

“What’s remarkable is how fat your prick is!” I sighed. “Don’t stop, Holmes.”

“Stopping at this point is highly improbably, my dear Watson. And if I may be crude—”

“Oh, please be crude, very crude!”

“—you are taking my ‘fat prick’ like a seasoned whore.”

“Oh, God, yes. Your whore, your good, good whore.”

We began on the rug, but with every thrust, we inched further along the floor.

The top of my head hit the closed door. I didn’t care because by then Holmes was finding his release again, and my world narrowed to him.

Just before he pulled out, Holmes caressed my face. He pressed his lips to my brow and then to my lips.

“Might I, just for this,” he made a wave of his hand, “call you my Pamina?”

“I expect we’ll call each other a great many names before this is over, but yes, you may call me your Pamina. I am a Child of the Moon, after all.”

He kissed my lips.

Somewhere I heard bells and Mrs. Hudson humming ‘Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja’.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holmes reflects on the first night of Watson's heat. POV Holmes. 
> 
> **Warning:** Holmes uses cocaine at the end of the chapter.

I’d loved him since I first saw him, but I had never seen him like this.

I’d often said that art in the blood takes many forms and, for once, I wished for a hand that was able to sketch with more verisimilitude than that required of a scene of a crime. I wished to capture Watson as he was, curled on his side, hair disheveled, his soldier’s body nude, save for the sheet which draped provocatively about his hip, the scarred shoulder proudly on display. The look on his face was one of profound stillness. He was sleeping the slumber of the collapsed, the utterly exhausted, the drained.

I wished to draw him. Even more, I wished to photograph him! Oh, how marvelous that would be, to capture him just as he lay! Limp, spent, debauched, but, for the moment, content.

I wanted many things, but I had to settle for engraving his portrait, every catch of light and shadow, in my mind.

I hummed an aria.

_Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön_

_Wie noch kein Auge je geseh'n!_

I couldn’t blame Tamino. Or doubt the veracity of the sentiment expressed. Who wouldn’t fall in love with Watson at first sight if they saw this portrait of him like this?

I rubbed my face as if to sweep the memories of the night to an appropriate dark corner of my mind. I had much work ahead of me.

But what a night!

After the first two rounds of coupling, the lust-fog cleared enough for me to wash and don on my dressing gown. After helping Watson to his feet, I told him I was going to check the premises while he cleaned himself. I wanted to give him some privacy as well as confirm that all was well about the residence. I wasn’t certain when the direct attack would come, but I was certain that one would come, eventually. Whoever was responsible for these events had gone to far too much trouble not to act boldly.

I found Mrs. Hudson snoring in my armchair with Toby by her feet and a rifle across her lap.

The doors and windows were locked, and I could see nothing worrisome in the street or on the nearby roofs.

I returned to Watson’s bedroom.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that to an unbonded Alpha the scent of an unbonded Omega in heat has its own sentience as well as its own irresistible personality.

I knew Watson was ready for a third round as soon as I crossed the threshold. The air told me as much. How exactly this message was conveyed, I did not know, however.

A jar of slick was on the bedside table, and Watson was kneeling on the bed, facing me, stroking his prick.

Now that was a picture, too!

Despite the urgency prescribed by the miasma, I was tempted to let Watson continue pleasuring himself for I was eager to observe precisely how he did it, what he liked, the pace and pressure he applied, but his scent prevailed. It was like a sharp hook dragging me by the nose towards him.

“I will take care of you afterwards,” I said, with no little command. “On your hands and knees. Right there.”

The order made my soldier groan and throw his hands up like a pagan supplicant.

“Oh, God, yes, Holmes! Take me from behind!”

I circled the bed and crawled onto it. Watson was already in the position espoused as ‘traditional’ by the few texts which address the matter with any frankness. His haunches were raised, and his head was down among the bedclothes.

I would’ve never thought my prick would be able to slide so easily into any human orifice, but Watson’s body was warm and welcoming. He took all of me without stutter or hesitation or any expression of discomfort.

It was rather perfect, really.

I took a deep breath. Yes, decidedly, there were advantages to this position. I had a view of the door should there be a breech in our defense. But more importantly, for now, at least, I could gaze upon, and appreciate, Watson’s beauty without so much of the intense intimacy of being face to face. I could ogle his muscular back and shoulders, admire the taper of his waist, openly salivate at his buttocks to my heart’s, or lower parts’, content. I could lust unobserved while I did my duty, of course.

Watson is a consummately handsome man, and it was grave understatement when I said it would be no hardship to me to fuck him for three days. In my own mind, I had pledged that, for the time allotted, to not just be his Alpha, to not just to meet his base biological need, but to be his lover, to care for him and pleasure him in any and every way that was agreeable to us both.

His surprise at my willingness to fellate him both angered and pleased me, anger at the selfish Alphas he’d had before but pleased that I could be the Alpha, perhaps the first during a heat, to bring him to climax with my mouth. I had done it twice so far, and both instances had been met with enthusiastic appreciation.

As far as penetration, I’d already learned that Watson liked it deep and fast, so I gripped him by the waist and was merciless in my pounding.

Watson’s skin broke out in a thick sheen of sweat. “Uh-uh-uh-uh!” I could hear the smile in the vibrating moan and the slurred ‘Good God, man, yes’ when his head drooped.

Lust pooled in my groin, and my release was prolonged. I unleased stream after stream.

“Oh, yes, oh, yes, oh, yes.”

Watson’s chanting was lovely. He sounded as satisfied to be receiving my seed as I was in sowing it. My hips rolled towards him, his muscles clenched round me, and I groaned. “Take it, my good man, take all of it. So good, so very good.”

He whimpered.

When I was thoroughly spent, I cautioned him,

“Don’t touch yourself yet, Watson.”

I pulled out and cut Watson’s protest short with another curt command.

“Up.” This, I immediately realised, was easier said than done. I helped Watson to raise his upper body. He leant some of his weight on my chest. He turned his head, and I kissed him, long and deep and wet, my tongue caressing his. He made delightful little noises in the back of his throat. I broke the kiss long enough to spit on my palm, then my hand dropped and curled round his prick.

“Put your hand on mine and guide me, Watson. Show me how you pleasure yourself.”

That was another image, moving image, that would be imprinted on my mind: the sight of our hands together, our fingers twined, sliding up and down Watson’s prick. The plane of his chest with its downy hair, more hair on his belly and his groin. It was all gorgeous. I kissed and licked at his neck, hungrily and affectionately, as I watched and as we stroked him.

His prick bubbled like a fountain.

Watson’s whole body was soaked with sweat. His thighs were trembling and appeared to be almost unable to support his kneeling position on the bed.

“Oh, Holmes,” he sighed and tipped like a felled tree, prone, onto the bed.

He was a wreck, but I couldn’t have looked much better.

Watson cracked one eye and gazed up at me and said in a steadier voice than I would’ve supposed him capable of, “You’re risking your life and your freedom to be with me. Thank you.”

“My life and my freedom would not be worth much if you were caged and suffering—or drowned. And well,” I tried to give him a wry smile, “all things considered, it’s not a bad way to go.”

Watson’s face went beautifully soft when he laughed or smiled. Now he was doing both, and I thought him the loveliest creature in the whole wide world.

Heedless of the mess, I fell on the bed beside Watson, facing him, but not touching him.

A quiet stillness descended on us and the room as we held each other’s gaze, softly, carefully.

Then Watson brought his hand to my jaw and held my head, quite unnecessarily. He then brought his lips to mine in a soft puckered kiss. Somewhere in the sinews and nerves of my corrupted body, I knew that the kiss meant that he loved me.

So, naturally, I kissed him back just as tenderly.

He broke the kiss, rolled away from me, then, moving backwards, wriggled closer. He reached behind him and grabbed my leg and dragged it forward over his hip.

I took him again. More slowly, but not exactly gently for both my body, and his, judging by the oaths and profanities which were muffled by the pillow, did not yet clamour for gentleness.

At some point, Watson’s head was thrown back, mine was inclined forward, and our cheeks brushed. The edge of his moustache made a very pleasant scratching against my face. It was very pleasant because it was Watson; I doubt I would’ve found the sensation agreeable if its source was someone else’s moustache.

Watson’s eyelids were drooping, and his countenance was falling slack.

“Wash,” I said.

Watson has made reference to what he calls my ‘cat-like cleanliness’ in at least one of his chronicles, and I confess that I am a bit of a stickler under normal circumstances when it comes to hygiene and appearance.

These were, of course, not normal circumstances, but I wanted to get Watson to the washstand whist he could still stand of his own accord.

He clung to me while I drew the wet flannel about his body, but my ministrations proved to be too solicitous because soon Watson was doing the soliciting.

“Oh, fuck me, Holmes. Fuck me now. In me, please!”

“My good man, you can barely stand!”

“What does standing have to do with it?!”

He had a point.

I laid him on his back on the bed as in the beginning, folded him like a love letter, and sank my prick into him. He exhaled a long moan that was more breath than sound. His handsome visage was pale with fatigue and cracked with strain. He seemed to be hanging on to consciousness by a single fraying tether.

His face contorted, not, I reassured myself, in pain, but in some kind of struggle.

“What is it, my good man?” I asked, slowing the pace of my thrust.

“I have to tell you before I forget, before…”

“Tell me what?”

“About the snake.”

“What snake?”

“The one that got in the kitchen yesterday.”

This was news to me.

“You were out. I killed it for Mrs. Hudson. The girl went half-mad.” He licked his lips and furrowed his brow. “The serpent. Tamino. Ladies of the night, three, and their Queen. It’s all very.” He coughed. “Operatic. You see?”

“I am beginning to.” My higher mind was whirring but my baser faculties, and my body, remembered the task at hand.

“Can you make sense of it, Holmes?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, thank god,” Watson moaned with utter and unembarrassed relief. His head lolled to one side, and I could see that tears had welled in his eyes. They trickled down the sides of his face. “Finish, Holmes. I’m so very tired.” He closed his eyes. Trickles grew to rivulets.

“Yours is a price above rubies, Watson. Even in the midst of all this turmoil, even when your body is wrung like a rag, you are thinking and thinking well. You do yourself a grave disservice in your chronicles of our adventures. Yours is a fine mind, and it is upon your fine mind that I sharpen my own. My whetstone.”

He managed a weak smile, and I spent.

I washed and perfumed Watson like a corpse for burial, then cleaned myself. With the skill of a sickbed nurse, I changed the linen beneath Watson’s inert body and tucked him snugly into clean, dry, warm bedclothes.

I found his watch and judged I had about three hours until dawn. I wrapped myself in my dressing gown and stretched beside Watson atop the bedding, my mind still ruminating on the case, or cases, as it were.

At some point, I drifted off to sleep.

I woke to a disturbing pang of cold at my neck.

I jerked.

Mrs. Hudson was standing over the bed with her index finger at her lips in an admonition of silence. A wet flannel was in her other hand.

I clasped her hands in both of mine and gave a nod of thanks in her direction. I also took the flannel and rubbed my face with it, allowing the sharp bite of the wet cold fabric to wake me further.

Mrs. Hudson mouthed the word ‘coffee,’ pointed to the door, and left with the hamper of soiled linen hitched on one hip.

I rose. I studied Watson and loved what I saw. I rubbed my face. I hummed an aria.

This scene had to end, but I was so loath to leave him. I had to convince myself again and again that the best way to protect Watson, and myself, was to get to the bottom of these events, to unmask the threat and vanquish it.

In the end, remaining with him would not help him.

* * *

I found paper and pencil and hastily scrawled a note. I folded the missive and left it on the bedside table, Watson’s name printed in large letters on the outside as I had no time to hunt for an envelope.

When I exited the bedroom, Mrs. Hudson greeted me with a steaming mug and a ploughman’s breakfast. I ate and drank quickly, peppering that good woman with questions about the previous day’s encounter with the snake. Toby was in good form, begging for scraps and nosing about my slippers.

After breakfast, I retreated to my own bedroom, carefully examining the chest where I kept my powders. It nor its contents showed any signs of tampering. Nevertheless, I took the day’s dose without confidence. I’d briefly considered uninhibiting myself as Watson had been but thought better of it. I needed whatever wits were to be had about me.

I then found my Morocco case. I drew up the syringe and injected myself with a quantity of the familiar seven percent solution. I did not like it, but I had resigned myself to the brutal truth that my own stamina would only take me so far. Three days of fucking and sleuthing might break the strongest Alpha, and I could not afford to be broken.

Feeling the white-hot surge of the drug through my veins, I swiftly set about making myself up into my first character of the day. It needn’t be a masterpiece, I reminded myself. The disguise only had to hold me until I reached one of my bolt holes where I could change into another. Of course, there was a rear exit in Mrs. Hudson’s quarters through which I could make my escape.

But I had to hurry. Dawn was just breaking when Mrs. Hudson and Toby saw me off, wishing me luck, and promising to take care of Watson in the meanwhile.

And so, I slipped into the awakening world a fugitive, a Child of the Sun, and a man on a mission.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The second night of Watson's heat.

_“…and so don’t despair, my good man. Keep faith in your strength and mine, and I will return shortly. As ever, your servant,_

_Sherlock Holmes.”_

Mrs. Hudson looked up from the note with expectancy. The spoon in her hand was still raised.

Like a dutiful child, I opened my mouth and accepted the quickly-cooling porridge. I was reminded of the scene in Sir Henry Baskerville’s bedchamber after his encounter with the legendary hell hound. Mrs. Barrymore the housekeeper had feed the enfeeble-minded lord his breakfast in much the same manner.

But Sir Henry had not been tied to a chair for his own safety as I was. The rope was coiled around my chest and arms and tied with complicated knots that suggested that Mister Hudson, whoever he may have been, was a sea-faring man.

After I took another bite, she set bowl, spoon, and note aside and rubbed my bad shoulder.

“Not troubling you, Doctor? Not too tight?”

“No.” It was the throbbing between my legs that was causing me more grief than the wreckage left behind by that old jezail bullet. I needed to be filled, to be stretched, to be fucked.

I’d woke alone. In a feral panic, I’d gone looking for Holmes, completely missing the note on the bedside table. Then I’d collapsed in a fit of abject and irrational sorrow which had quickly soured into a cruel and self-destructive humor.

Mrs. Hudson, bless her, and Toby had come to the rescue. With a strength and agility that belied her age, she’d relieved me of the dagger and pistol I’d been contemplating and tied me to a chair.

Then she’d found Holmes’s note and had read it to me, thus far, thrice over while she foisted spoonfuls of porridge down my throat.

Toby was almost standing beside me, his two forepaws on my thigh, looking hopefully at Mrs. Hudson.

“You’ve had your dinner chop, Papageno,” she remarked.

Toby woofed that one dinner chop was woefully inadequate for a canine of his caliber.

The flat was shuttered, and it was impossible to know if it were dusk yet, but then there was a noise.

“See?” said Mrs. Hudson. “Fret no more, Doctor. He’s returned. You knew he would.”

“Mrs. Hudson.” I was ashamed of myself, ashamed at the tremendous trouble I’d caused. My head lolled as I apologised. “I’m so very sorry.”

She tut-tutted dismissively. “We all lose our minds every now and then, Doctor, and some for less cause than yourself.”

At the opening of the interior door, Mrs. Hudson turned and cried playfully,

“Captain Basil!”

Holmes removed his cap and gave a low theatrical bow. “At your service, madame.”

“It’s not I who require your servicing, Captain. I shall bring your dinner in about,” she glanced at the clock, “quarter of an hour.”

“Splendid! And I left a packet of savoury liver for our Papageno in the kitchen.”

Toby woofed excitedly and, with the bells of his collar jingling, followed Mrs. Hudson out of the room.

“Watson.”

I couldn’t help it. The tears streamed.

“I’m such a wretch, Holmes!” I lamented, putting my chin to my chest, taking in just how pathetic a figure I made, tied to a chair like a hostage or a madman. “I didn’t see the note at first.”

Holmes shushed me as he approached. Then he unbound my ankles from the legs of the chair and tipped me and the chair backwards onto the floor.

I had a moment of disorientation followed by a surge of exaltation as a prick was filling me.

It was a highly improbable arrangement of limbs and furnishing but somehow Holmes managed it, and I didn’t complain. On the contrary, I began to babble his praises.

“Holmes, you’re wonderful in the true sense of the word, performer of wonders. Oh, God, yes. Your marvelous, miraculous, oh, God, oh, God…”

“I didn’t abandon you, Watson,” he whispered against my skin.

“I know it. That is, my head knows it. But my body felt betrayal. I knew the frame was skewed but I couldn’t right it, Holmes. And then these horrible demon thoughts rose.” I choked back a sob. “I wanted to put an end to myself. I’m so sorry I doubted you, Holmes.”

He shushed me again, then kissed me.

For a long while, that’s all I knew, Holmes’s prick pumping in and out of me and his mouth on mine, telling me with swipes of his tongue and pressure of his lips and tiny nibbles how much he desired me, loved me, cherished me. He smelled of the docks and his tiny moustache and chin stubble scratched me in foreign ways, but his prick was so familiar, so perfect, so needed that I scarcely noted the aberrations.

There was a crack then a bang, then something shifted. My arms were still bound to my sides and the back of the chair, but the rest was a muddle.

Holmes kept at his thrusting. Not pausing for an instant. His breath was hot in my ear. “Just the seat of the chair. I’ll reimburse Mrs. Hudson, but in the meantime, she’s got plenty more in the lumber room. I swear, my dear Watson, not even splintering wood can stop me from decorating the walls of your beautiful cunt.”

“OH!”

Cunt. That filthy word pronounced in Holmes’s proper voice, still with a trace of Captain Basil’s maritime dialect, sent me over the edge. I squeezed harder than ever before around the member inside me.

Holmes gasped and spent. He laughed as he rocked into me, each push releasing yet another stream of hot seed. His chuckle was a delightful, briny, bawdy rumble in the crook of my neck.

“Watson, Watson, Watson, my beautiful Pamina, trussed up for the taking. How do you like my magic flute? Is it turning your sorrow to joy? Is it producing the music of sighs and moans and little pleas for more?”

A smile split my face, and I sighed contentedly at the ceiling, my words a bit like sweet, soft birdsong,

“More, more, more.”

Holmes kissed up my neck to my jaw and then my lips.

“Oh, Holmes, I love you,” I groaned and kissed him back, for all I was worth.

When the kiss broke, Holmes was looking into my eyes with such tenderness. His lips parted, and I was expecting a declaration of some sort, but instead, he said,

“Thank you, Mrs. Hudson. Cold pheasant is all I could ever want. Please add the cost of the chair to the rent.”

I heard a noise of acknowledgement and of agreement and then the clink of a heavy tray on the table.

I tried to turn my head and caught sight of sturdy boots and the hem of a dress. Then my view was entirely blocked by a large white wrinkled snuffling monstrosity.

“Toby!”

Toby licked our faces and snorted good-naturedly.

Holmes laughed and began to hum “ _Der Vogelfänger Bin Ich Ja_.”

“Come, Toby,” called Mrs. Hudson. “Bon appétit mon capitaine! There’s ample, so help yourself, Doctor.”

Holmes turned his attention back to me. “A meal, a wash, a change of garment, Watson, and then I have much to tell you.”

“In bed?”

He quirked a smile. “In bed or wherever you wish.”

He freed me from my bonds and helped me to my feet, rubbing my arms and shoulders, back and chest, with vigorous movements that restored circulation and sent a good deal of blood flowing below the belt.

He left me to wash his hands, then took up his place at the table. I also had a quick wash and found a dressing gown, Holmes’s, as it turned out, the mouse-brown one.

Dare I confess that I knelt on the floor at Holmes’s feet while he ate his dinner?

He fed me bits of bread and cheese and ham, which I dutifully consumed without protest.

He sat pulled away and at a slant from the table so that he could spread his legs and so that I could nestle my head between them.

I inhaled the perfume of our recent coupling and was comforted and aroused at the same time.

Holmes concentrated on his food while below table, his prick and I seemed to be having a conversation of our own, of nuzzling and rubbing met with pulses and delicious stiffening.

Soon, Holmes was pushing back his plate and sighing. He petted my head and said,

“Watson, might you indulge me the duration of a pipe? I have a strong urge to smoke and put the days’ events in some order. I have an even stronger urge to feel your mouth round my prick.”

By way of reply, I licked the front of his trousers.

Sidestepping the broken chair, we moved to the sofa, where Holmes fiddled with his pipe while I freed his erection.

I could not take him all, but I wrapped my hand around the base and bobbed and sucked around the exposed portion.

He hummed and smoked and caressed my head and neck. I sucked.

Holmes leaned to the side and reached a long hand down the length of my body and drew up the dressing gown.

I carefully held his prick in my mouth and moved my hands from his body to my own, yanking the mouse-brown cashmere wool so that it fell to the floor.

“Yes,” Holmes said, approvingly.

I raised my arse and put one foot on the ground so as to spread myself a little.

“Oh, lovely, lovely,” murmured Holmes, sounding much more like a pleased Alpha punter than a consulting detective. Then his voice fell low and demanding. “Oh, dear, I need you, Watson.”

Never have I moved so fast. I leapt into his lap and impaled myself, facing away from him, almost squatting between his legs.

He came at once, gripping my hips tightly, then he slumped forward with an exhale that was ragged and long.

“Lean back against me, “Watson.”

I heard the slide of the small drawer in the side table and did as I was bid.

Then there were warm, wet, firm fingers curling round my prick.

“Watch,” Holmes urged. “Watch your Alpha pleasuring you while his prick is still inside you, still filling you. So deliciously wanton.”

I kept my eyes on the hand that was stroking me so expertly while the hand that had been around my waist eased up my chest, brushing one of my nipples, I shivered.

“Oh, yes?” mused Holmes aloud. “So many sensitivities to map, my dear Watson.” Then, without warning, he closed his finger and thumb round the bud and pinched.

I burst like geyser.

Holmes’s teeth pressed softly into the skin of my back. “I am under your spell, my beautiful Pamina.”

I lifted off of him, then sat right back down in his lap.

He snaked his arms round my waist and held me. “I do need to pack Captain Basil up. I’ll admit that I am much fonder of your moustache than my own.” He dropped sweet kisses like a breadcrumb trail from my earlobe to the tip of my shoulder. Then he dropped a hand between my legs and began to tease my entrance with my fingers, tracing it, tentatively dipping between the folds.

When he brought his hand up, I saw it was dripping.

Instinctively, my mouth opened.

He growled as I sucked his fingers clean. Before I’d finished, he had curled his other hand forward; it took up where the other hand left off, fondling me.

His finger in my mouth, his fingers in my cunt.

I sucked. I squirmed. I was tethered to him, strung between him like an instrument, and there was nowhere else I wanted to be.

“It’s not going to enough for either of us, is it?” he moaned. “Not even if I seal your sweet cunny and your sweet mouth with my fists.”

I cried out. He threw me to the ground and fucked me.

“Watson?” His voice was thick with concern, and I felt him cradling my head, which had struck the floor with no little force. “I am becoming too rough,” he muttered contritely. “Brutish.”

“I warned you that you might be overwhelmed, Holmes.”

“So you did. And I fear you might be right. Well, may I leave you long enough to change and wash?”

“Yes, of course.”

We both washed, and Holmes removed his costume and joined me in my bedroom.

* * *

After another round, we were in bed, Holmes propped up on pillows and I lying against his chest. I listened to his heartbeat as he brushed my hair over and over with a gentle hand.

“First, I tried to run to ground our housemaid and the fellow who saw to the fireplace, but they seemed to have disappeared into thin air. Then I followed up on the chemist where you procure your powders. I could find nothing suspicious there. I moved on to surreptitiously collecting witness accounts related to the brothel murders. There was someone, a man, seen entering the establishment at the hour of interest. And the descriptions of him are all very similar to each other and, unfortunately, also similar to my own, but I tracked down one witness, a weak-minded fellow who has a certain tendresse for one of the women who were killed. He is often seen loitering about the neighbourhood. He was the only one who got a good look at the man who entered, specifically his clothing. The witness wasn’t very articulate, but he could draw with amazing detail.”

Holmes left the bed and the room and returned with a sketch, which I studied.

“This man is a soldier, Holmes!”

Holmes nodded. “But look closely. I taxed the witness extensively on the nature of the dress.”

“Well, it’s not a British uniform. Or not quite. It looks more like a…”

“Costume?”

“Yes!”

“Just like our maid who wasn’t a maid. A soldier who isn’t a soldier.”

“Actors,” I breathed.

Holmes nodded. “You follow well, Watson.” He took the sketch and set it aside. “I am worried about the witness, too. He works in a slaughterhouse and has bloody clothes in his residence. That and his limited mental faculties will make him easy prey for the police when they get around to questioning him. His freedom as well as mine may be at stake.”

“You have to find this shamming soldier.” I tapped the drawing.

“All in good time. The theatrical nature of everything struck me as well, and I decided to pay a call on the Weber household, in disguise, of course.”

“How are the girls?”

“Weak but recovering. There is a scandal there, Watson, however, and when I describe it to you, I think you will begin to see what I do. There was an understanding between the eldest of the sisters, Josephina, and the owner of the opera company that is putting on _The Magic Flute_.”

“But she’s a child, Holmes!”

“Fifteen, yes, too young for such an arrangement, but apparently she has developed a stubborn affection for the man, who is at least four score her senior, and will hear nothing ill said of him. Her mother and father were enamoured, too, with her suitor for a time but someone, somewhere told them some unsavory business in the man’s past, and they demurred, saying the marriage should be postponed until the girl is of age. The staff say the fiancé was cordial about the whole situation, but on the night of the decision, the opening night of the opera, all three sisters fell unexpectedly and grievously ill. Does the story sound familiar?”

It did. Realisation dawned. “Oh, Holmes, and the company is Austrian.”

Holmes smiled grimly. “Yes. The owner is calling himself Runger. He hides his disfigurement very well, or so the Weber’s cook led me to believe.”

“Baron Gruner,” I gasped with horror.

Baron Gruner was an evil a villain as Holmes and I had ever faced. He was an Austrian who had murdered his first wife and escaped justice. Then he’d formed an attachment to an English girl of a well-connected family. Holmes had been hired by one of the highest in the land to unentangle the miss from her betrothed and to make her see reason. We’d learned of the Baron’s cruelty from one of his former lovers, Miss Kitty Winter. Holmes had attempted direct persuasion. With that failed, I’d posed as an expert in Chinese pottery to gain entrance to the Baron’s residence. Later Holmes and I attempted to steal the Baron’s ‘book of ruined souls,’ a leather-bound record of all his conquests, in order to change his fiancée’s mind, but Miss Winter got their first and had thrown vitriol on the Baron.

“So, this is his revenge, Holmes.” A shiver ran down my spine.

Holmes took me in his arms and held me. My heart was pounding, and for the first time since the heat began, I forgot entirely about my body’s needs.

“Yes, it’s a wicked plan, and one that I suspect has been in cultivation since the vitriol attack. Gruner, or Runger, founded an opera company and collected a troupe of actors to do his bidding. At least two of them must be very devoted, indeed. Or very desperate. And he’s using Mozart’s _The Magic Flute_ as his devilish libretto. It would be interesting if it weren’t so diabolical.”

“He put a snake in our kitchen.”

“I think he may have hired Essie to put the snake in our kitchen.”

“But she went mad when it was discovered! Oh,” I thought about the housemaid’s hysterics, “very dramatic. So, it was she who tampered with my powders?”

“I suspect she did that with the assistance of the man who saw to the fireplace.”

I pulled away from Holmes and rubbed a distracted hand through my hair. “But, Holmes, to think that because of us four women are dead, because we thwarted him. The mind reels!”

“Disavow yourself of that kind of thinking, Watson. They are dead and the Weber girls are ill because the Baron is evil. We know that the Baron Gruner has no genuine regard for life, especially women’s life. Perhaps the same man who fixed our fireplace slaughtered the women in the brothel. Or perhaps the Baron did it himself. I find that to be unlikely given the descriptions. I think he found an unscrupulous and unsound actor who resembles me to play the part of slaughterer.”

“Kitty?”

“Is safe. I got word from Shinwell.”

“So the Baron wanted me destroyed from within and you destroyed from without.”

“He didn’t win with Miss de Merville, and he won’t win now, Watson.”

“So, what’s next?”

What happened next was Toby erupting in a cacophony of angry barking.

Holmes and I sprang to our feet and threw our dressing gowns about our nude forms. Then Holmes got his single stick and I my revolver.

“He’s gone,” announced Mrs. Hudson, looking like a study in contrasts with her fluffy shawl draped over both shoulders and a gleaming rifle leaning against one. She was peering through the curtains. Then she glanced down at Toby, who was whining at her heels. “I don’t know who scared whom more.”

“Monostatos,” I said. Then for Mrs. Hudson’s edification, I explained, “In Mozart’s _The Magic Flute_ , Monostatos is the King’s majordomo. He threatens the princess Pamina’s life and virtue on more than one occasion.”

“Yes,” said Holmes. “Let’s hope the fellow’s as incompetent and unsuccessful as the role he’s playing. Come, it’s time to do a survey of the doors and windows. I don’t want to be caught off guard again.”

We conducted our surveillance as a well-armed party of four and found the premises secure. Nevertheless, Holmes and I set about reinforcing our barricade at various points.

Mrs. Hudson insisted on bedding down with Toby in the sitting room, so Holmes and I reluctantly retreated to my bedroom.

As soon as we’d closed the door behind us, my desire awakened, and all normal thoughts of fear and danger, strategy and planning, burned up like straw.

“Holmes.”

“I’m here, Watson.” Holmes opened his dressing gown, revealing his massive erect prick, which was as mouth-watering as ever. “I have a strong yearning to have you beneath me. To protect you with my very body if necessary.”

I nodded for I had a complementary urge.

We settled on the bed. I was on my back. Holmes was over me, but he could lift his head, and did often, to check the door, which was the only entrance to the room. He found his release inside me, then brought me to my own release with his slicked hand.

Holmes was still looming over me when a fatalistic notion struck me. Neither he nor I knew what awaited us the following day or, indeed, the following hour. We might be killed or tortured or any combination of the two. I’d allowed Holmes as a Child of the Sun into my body to quench my natural thirst, but I hadn’t really made love to the man. And I realised, with stark and sudden clarity, that I loved Holmes in every way it was possible to love.

I held Holmes’s grey-eyed gaze, then I kissed his lips tenderly. I kissed down his neck, running my hands over his arms, shoulders, and chest. My lips followed my fingertips, almost worshipping the skin beneath them. I felt his muscles, his strength, and the warmth of his blood. Once again, I listened to the rhythm of his heart. I kissed and sucked his nipples until they pebbled. I cupped his buttocks and massaged them.

“Watson.”

Holmes was propped up on his elbows and knees, watching me as I made my way slowly down his body.

“Holmes.”

For once, I ignored his prick, licking down his belly and around the base of wiry hair.

When I took one of his sacs in my mouth, he groaned and spread his knees a bit wider. I licked and sucked each one in turn, chanting in my mind, in one unbroken thread,

‘I love you, I love you, I love you, this is how I love you, like this, like this, my beautiful Alpha, like this.”

“Oh, God, Watson, oh God,” he moaned.

Holmes’s hips rolled every so slightly, filling my mouth with his heavy hanging sacs, telling me with a minute movement when he wanted me to shift from one to the other and back.

Eventually, I slipped out from under him and twisted and set at once to licking the backside of his balls and the strip of skin that curved towards arsehole.

“Watson!” He arched his back like a cat.

I bit each of his buttocks. “Do you like it?” I teased.

“More than I ever imagined possible,” he confessed.

“First time?”

“Yes, I’ve never known such intimacy from anyone. I daresay I’d never have allowed it from anyone. But you…”

I hummed.

“…are welcome, are invited, to do whatever you wish with me.”

That wasn’t good enough. I made a frustrated noise.

“But what do you like? Or rather, what do you like best, Holmes?”

Holmes took a deep, ragged breath and coughed. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper.

“Suck them, my Moon princess.”

So I did, sliding back beneath him.

Holmes’s release nearly decorated the bedclothes rather than the inside of me, but the Omega sensed the tell-tale tension in the Alpha’s body, and I rolled us and crawled atop him just in time.

“We might be massacred in this bed, Watson,” panted Holmes after he’d spent, “but I can’t say I’d have any regrets.”

I smiled a broad smile and brushed his sweat-damp hair from his forehead. “I do feel a bit like Nero, fiddling while Rome is burning.”

“Leave the fiddling to me,” he growled.

Then he picked me up and threw me on the bed and pinned my hands over my head.

“Shoulder all right?” he asked politely. I nodded, and he bent his head and began an exhaustive assault on my nipples.

“I think you could write a monograph on the subject, Holmes!” I gasped between the scraping and the soothing.

“I might, Watson, if I wouldn’t run the risk of giving someone else the keys to your secret pleasure, and that, I confess, I’m loath to do. Selfishly, I want your little moans and whimpers to be mine alone.”

“Holmes, can I persuade you to suck my prick?”

“You can and you just have, my dear Watson.”

He released my hands and brought his thumbs to my much-abused buds as he moved his head southward.

“Look at this Alpha, taking such good care of his Omega.”

Holmes hummed, and the vibrations went straight to the core of me, stoking my pleasure.

Holmes swallowed my release, and after a short period of affectionate embraces and exchange of sentimental endearments, I somehow made to the washstand unaided and of my own volition.

Holmes slapped my buttock as I passed and gave me the cheekiest grin I’d ever seen on his long face.

I washed myself, and Holmes gave a weary moan and rolled off the bed. I changed the bed linen as he performed his own ablutions at the washstand.

“I’m amazed you can still stand,” I remarked. “You’ve hardly rested in two days.”

His face fell. Then he pressed his lips together. “I inject myself with cocaine yesterday morning.”

My world tipped slightly.

“Oh, I see.”

“I’m sorry, Watson. But for once, I used it out of what I perceived as necessity and not boredom.”

I nodded and sank onto the bed. I suddenly realised the greatest pleasure, the greatest good, I could give the man who had given me so much was the gift of rest. I yawned on purpose and fell back upon the pillows.

“Stay with me until I fall asleep?”

Holmes’s expression softened. “Of course. We have some hours before dawn.”

He curled behind me, facing the door. I closed my eyes and let sleep pull me under.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those familiar with the original Sherlock Holmes canon will recognize Baron Gruner as the villain in "The Illustrious Client." It was not a story treated (as far as I know) by the Lenfilms production.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holmes hunts down Baron Gruner. POV Holmes. Short chapter. 
> 
> Please lower your expectations with regard to this chapter. Plot is not my strength. Next chapter will be the final night of the heat and the conclusion.

With dogged determination that would’ve made Toby proud, I fulfilled my role as sleuthhound and had finally tracked Essie to a boarding house well known in theatrical circles. As I had expected, Essie’s hair and clothing and comportment were very different from those of the housemaid she’d played at 221B, but I recognised her easily enough.

A sharp stab of anger pierced my chest when I first spotted her, one that seemed to demand quick, decisive action on my part, but I also suspected Essie would recognise me if I confronted her directly, even in my current disguise of an old woman. She, no doubt, had an actor’s sense of costume. Therefore, with some effort, I tempered my desire to challenge her in person and satisfied myself by sending her a menacing telegram and observing her reaction.

Where would she run? Oh, but I wanted to shake the truth out of her!

I was instantly puzzled at my own reaction. Surely this anger wasn’t helpful. It could only cloud my judgement with regards to the case. And it felt strange, hot and tight, like a swarm of wasps, in my chest.

Then, it hit me like a blow.

In my haste to leave 221B, I had forgot to take my suppressant powder.

The sleuth was viewing a person critical to the case, but the Alpha only saw a threat to his Omega.

I was temporarily so consumed by the dread of how I was going to hold the Alpha in check that I almost missed Essie’s flight.

From the beginning, she was looking surreptitiously over her shoulder and nervously about her. I had to be very careful that she should not catch sight of me.

Essie went inside a boarding house very similar to her own, but she almost immediately returned to the pavement. It was clear the party she sought was not at home. She oscillated on the pavement for some time, and then, seeming to make up her mind, made her way to an omnibus.

I followed. It was already late afternoon. I had not eaten or drunk since breakfast, but with a heady stream of Alpha pheromones flooding my blood, I hardly felt any physical need, within or without.

My need was narrowed to one: to protect my Omega, my Pamina. And to do that, I had to find the Baron.

Deciding on the pretense of soliciting funds for charity, I raised his hand to knock at the door of the stately residence where Essie had led me, but then I heard her scream.

I pushed into the house without preamble and found her crumpled on the floor, cradling the lifeless body of a man who looked just like me.

The man’s throat had been cut.

For a moment, I just stared, mesmerised not by the horror of the scene but rather the likeness of the dead man.

Unaware of my presence, Essie was sobbing and rocking the man in her arms. “He killed him. The bastard killed my poor Jimmy. Oh, hateful day that I ever crossed that monster’s path!” Essie closed her eyes and lifted her head and wailed, “I know just where he’s gone! He’s gone to kill that doctor!” She opened her eyes looked down at the man. “I’ll revenge you, my boy, or die trying.”

I backed out of the house and headed towards Baker Street, only pausing to send as complete a message as haste allowed to Scotland Yard.

When I finally reached Baker Street, the battle was just underway.

Toby was growling. Mrs. Hudson was shouting. And there was another voice.

The dog and the landlady were blocking Watson’s bedroom door. They artfully dodged the swipes of the blade in a man’s hand while trying to land their own blows, Toby with his teeth and Mrs. Hudson with her skillet.

“Gruner!” I called. “We meet again. You’re just as beautiful as before.”

Gruner turned. His wrathful expression was hidden in vitriol scars on his face.

“How does it feel, Mister Holmes, to have your life on the brink of ruin? I am going to kill your lady and your dog and violate your pretty doctor in every way possible while you watch! Then kill you both, of course. Revenge is best served with musical accompaniment, don’t you agree?”

His laugh was not musical at all. It was pure villainy.

Such hateful words, such horrible mirth, shouldn’t have relieved me, but they did.

If Gruner was telling the truth, it meant he hadn’t got to Watson yet.

Was Watson blockaded in his room? That seemed so very unlike him.

WHAM!

Mrs. Hudson’s skillet struck with the back of Gruner’s head. Toby lunged. Momentarily unsettled, the baron lost his grip on his knife. Toby charged, clamping his teeth around the handle of the knife and returning to Mrs. Hudson, who took the blade.

I immediately plunged into the fray. The cane I had used as an old woman was a single stick in disguise.

The three of us made a formidable defense, slowly driving Gruner towards the front door.

“Get him out in the street!” I cried.

Mrs. Hudson broke away. She unlocked the front door and flung it open.

“Toby! Charge!” I ordered with all the command of a battlefield general.

With teeth bared, Toby lunged as high and with as much force his canine strength afforded.

Gruner screamed as he was hurtled through the cloth quarantine shield which had covered the exterior threshold. There was a loud ripping sound as he fell into the street—

BAM!

—and straight into the path of a bullet.

“That’s for Jimmy,” said Essie as she lowered the smoking gun.

Chaos erupted on the street.

At once, Mrs. Hudson, Toby, and I drew back inside, all panting.

“Watson?” wheezed I. It seemed disturbing, not to say bizarre, that the man had not emerged from the bedroom.

“Silly dear,” said Mrs. Hudson, sinking her hand into her apron pocket. She handed me a note.

HOLMES. CAN’T BEAR ANOTHER SCENE WAITING FOR YOUR RETURN. HAVE TAKEN A SMALL DOSE OF LAUDANUM IN MEANTIME. PAMINA OR JULIET? YOURS REGARDLESS. JW

I shook my head and laughed. “Silly, indeed, I can’t believe he’s slept through the whole thing!”

Toby woofed.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Watson finally wakes. POV Holmes.
> 
> This chapter begins with Holmes having sex with Watson while Watson is asleep and drugged. There is also mention of Holmes's cocaine use later in the chapter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be one more chapter because I wanted to end on Watson POV and I don't like to switch POV in the same chapter.

I lit the lamp and stood over Watson’s sleeping form, admiring him. After a few minutes, I reconsidered my position and drew a straight chair beside the bed and sat. After a few more minutes, I realised it was something of a sickbed scene and shivered and got to my feet again. Finally, the Alpha took the reins from the man, and I threw off my dressing gown, circled the bed, and slipped beneath the bedclothes.

His skin was soft, the muscles beneath, firm. He smelled delectable. He was warm and very inviting. I pressed my body to the length of his, put my nose to his nape, and inhaled his rich perfume.

After a few minutes of this utter bliss, Watson commenced to whimper.

I rose up in the bed and leaned over to get a better look at his face. His brow was furrowed, and his expression was one of mild, but growing, distress.

No doubt he was like a seal, or some other animal found in polar seas, straining to break the surface for air but held down by the unyielding ice of the drug he’d taken.

The Alpha had no reservations about the appropriate response.

I arranged the pillows, then myself. Then I slid my prick inside my sleeping Watson.

A long, contented sigh escaped his lips. Indeed, the noise continued unbated until I was fully sheathed.

“There,” I whispered softly. “Is that what you needed?”

There was a faint hum and a strong clenching round my prick.

Clearly, certain parts of Watson were fully awake and responsive even if others were still caught in the drug’s stupor.

I drew my prick out slowly, almost completely, then pushed back in, and when I thought I had reached my limit, I pushed just a little bit harder, just a little bit deeper.

Waking him up? Or claiming more? Difficult to say.

I did it again, and when I was closest to him, I spread my form as best I could atop him, chest touching back, arms atop arms. I let the weight of my body settle upon him like a second skin.

“Your Alpha’s here, my love. Giving you what you need.”

Watson moaned softly.

I pushed up and began to thrust faster.

The texts I’d consulted, all that I knew of which dealt with the subject, had described the phenomenon of Omega self-lubrication in great detail, but had omitted to even mention, even in a dry footnote, how fabulous such lubrication felt around a erect Alpha prick, specifically a large, thick, beefy red, engorged, throbbing prick like the one that was filling Watson in that moment.

“Perhaps no one would believe it,” I mused aloud. “If you set into words how this, ugh, feels, it would be incredible.” I groaned. I rubbed Watson’s lower back. “Good Omega, so good, taking my prick, sliding in, sliding out, stretching to accommodate me, something so big fitting so very well.”

I found a pace which would keep me hard but not seeking immediate release and went back to admiring Watson.

“You’re so beautiful,” I said, wanting the first words he heard when he surfaced to be sweet ones. “I’m going to keep fucking you just like this. Keeping my cock warm and ready for as long as it takes. I’m a patient Alpha. Your Omega body needs to be filled, need to be stretched, needs my prick inside it, good. But I’m waiting for my beautiful soldier-doctor to wake up and say my name.”

I shoved into him. He made a noise and clenched.

“Oof!” I smiled and angled my hips a bit when I thrust next. “Do it again.”

On cue, Watson’s body clenched again.

“Yes, no one would believe it,” I repeated, harkening back to my earlier complaint against the academic treatment of certain themes.

Watson rolled a bit to one side, and I had to slow my rhythm considerably and adjust my position to keep inside him.

His eyes were still closed, but his lips were moving, pressing and unpressing. His breathing, I noted, was quickening and becoming more irregular.

Surfacing, then.

The left side of his chest was on display, along with his old scar, and I could not resist licking my thumb and forefinger and reaching forward and teasing his nipple until it pebbled.

“Wake up, Watson,” I cooed. “Wake up, and I’ll suck them and your wonderful prick, too. After I flood you with this river that’s pooling inside me. Trade that wonderful dream you’ve having for a waking fantasy with me.”

I pinched his pink bud.

Watson’s lips parted. “Ah!” he cried.

“Ah, indeed, my dear Watson. I want them in my mouth. I want to lick them. There are so many things I want to lick. I want my tongue inside you. Shame on me for not tasting you before now! Don’t you want my tongue in your cunny? Don’t you want me lapping at you like Papageno at his water dish? Don’t you want to ride my tongue the way you’ve ridden my prick, oh, my dear man…”

“Holmes!”

I pushed him back flat into the bed and began to pump in earnest.

“Good evening, Watson,” I said evenly.

He chuckled. “G’evening. Fuck, yes.” He raised his hips slightly. “Deep, Holmes, deep.”

I obliged.

“Did you have sweet dreams?” I asked.

“I dreamt I was flower being fucked by a bee.”

“Bees are wonderful creatures, Watson.”

“They certainly are!” He laughed again. “With their really hard stingers.” He hummed and reached his hands over his head to prevent knocking into the headboard as his body lurched with each of my thrusts.

“Faster, Holmes. Let the Alpha have his way.” He began to make noises that might have concerned the man but only stoked the Alpha’s lust into a frenzy.

“Ah-ah-ah-ha!”

I thought the vibrating cry was Watson, but then I realised, with astonishment, it was me.

My pleasure finally broke its lead, and I poured stream after stream into Watson, who wriggled and squirmed and, if my ears did not deceive me, giggled with delight.

I was impatient to be pleasuring Watson, but my body had other ideas. It seemed an interminable time before I was completely spent.

I kissed him. It was a long, languid sliding of mouths and tongues.

I bent my head, but Watson gripped me by my hair and halted my descent.

“I want to hear what happened.”

“Might I suck you off first?” I asked, in what sounded very much like a plea. I nodded to his own hard prick.

He made as if to shake his head, but then seemed to think better of it, and shrugged.

My fellatio was, I confess, ruthlessly efficient.

“Now,” said Watson, sitting up and arranging the pillows to his own satisfaction. “What has happened?”

“In summary, everything’s over, and everyone’s all right.”

Watson’s eyebrows shot up. “Begin at the beginning! And tell me all!”

I told him about finding and following Essie. I told him about the murder at Gruner’s house of the man I suspected was responsible for the killing of the four women. I told him about racing back to Baker Street and the fight with Gruner.”

He stared incredulously at me, then turned his head toward the door. “All that was happening just outside my door, and I didn’t wake up?” His gaze shifted to the small brown bottle on the bedside table. “I never want to take another dose of laudanum again, Holmes. The soldier is quite ashamed that I was not even able to come to my own defense!”

“Your fatigue and your state of mind probably augmented the drug’s inherent effects.”

Watson shrugged.

I told him of Gruner’s death, and the chaos that ensued.

“The police arrived. When they saw the quarantine notice, they maintained their distance. Mrs. Hudson and I submitted brief written statements. I also took the liberty of submitting a statement in a passable version of your hand, Watson. Telling them that you were too incapacitated to witness the fight would’ve raised questions I didn’t want to answer.”

“Right, right.”

“I imagine we will all have to make formal statements about what happened in a couple of days.”

“Essie could reveal all, Holmes.”

“She could if she’s found and found alive. I will arrange legal counsel for her if she does and perhaps, such counsel might persuade her to leave out one part of her tale. Mrs. Hudson, when she’s at liberty to do so, has promised to go and see her, too, with the same objective. It is a bridge we must burn when we come to it.”

“Mrs. Hudson isn’t injured?”

“No, Mrs. Hudson is fine. She is disappointed that her rifle jammed, but apparently it was bequeathed to her by a doting grandfather on her coming of age.”

“Really?”

“Yes. A family with unusual traditions, hers. I have promised her a more reliable weapon when one can be procured.”

“And Papageno?”

“He showed his full mettle and has nary a scratch on him. I tell you, Watson, there is no dog to match him in the land. I have every plan to spoil him until we have to return him to his owner.”

Watson smiled. “So, it is as you say, Holmes. Everything’s over, and everyone’s all right.”

“Well, I may have been simplifying things.” I took a deep breath. “I have to confess something, Watson.”

“What is that? If you mean disturbing my sleep, you needn’t worry. You acted as you should have.”

“No, not that, though the reassurance is welcome.” I swallowed. “I forgot to take my own powder this morning. It is a first for me.”

“Ah.” Watson inclined his head. “You are right to clarify. Not everything is over. Not yet.”

“And not everyone is all right. I am far more Alpha than I am accustomed to being.”

Watson chuckled. “You have my sympathies.” Then he looked at me, his eyes lit, and curled forward onto his hands, inching forward until his face was before mine, so close I could feel his breath against my cheek, “We should have our fun while it lasts.” His voice was a teasing caress.

“Absolutely,” I agreed.

“I believe I was promised some sucking.”

I smiled.

“I believe I was also promised a tongue licking,” he persisted. “Are you an Alpha of your word?”

I nodded. “I will do all that and more,” I vowed, feeling my lust swell, “but first…”

I grabbed him around his chest, and with a strength, mine, and a flexibility, his, I would never have imagined possible, I lifted him off the bed while he flung his legs round my waist. It was all one fluid, graceful motion, along with my standing and turning and taking four steps toward the wall.

Watson climbed up my body like a monkey and then sank himself down upon my prick.

“Yes, yes, yes,” I chanted.

With the upper part of Watson’s back braced against the wall, I thrust into him, alternating between a grind and bounce of my hips.

“That’s right,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me!”

I met the rhythm of his oaths with my thrusts.

He slapped my arse. It made a delicious noise and conjured the fleeting image of a horse being spurred.

Watson seemed to have read my mind for he said in a strained whisper,

“That’s right, my stud. And what a pretty prick you have. I’m yours for the breeding, my magnificent stallion.”

At this, I spent. I knew I must be pressing Watson far too tightly into the wall for far too long, but I hadn’t the will or resolve restrain myself. I buried my face in the crook of his neck and wheezed as my seed left me.

“I’ve got you,” Watson said, soothingly. “I want it all, down to the last drop of your Alpha spittle. Such a good Alpha. Keeping me full of seed. And full of prick. It feels so good. Thank you, thank you, oh, thank you. To have an Alpha who takes such good care of his Omega.” He made a noise and stroked my hair. It was nonsense, what he said, but I lapped it up like milk.

His legs were still wrapped around my waist, his ankles still locked at my lower back. Slowly, I returned to myself and carried him to the bed.

I set him down as gently as my quivering legs allowed. I withdrew my prick and stood upright anew.

And it was then that I remembered.

“Mrs. Hudson told me to say there was a cold collation lying covered on the table. You haven’t eaten. You’re probably ravenous.”

Watson laughed. “I am going to be a petulant Omega and demand my ravishing. Then _we_ can eat.”

The change of pronoun wasn’t lost on me.

I grinned and said,

“As you wish.”

I made love to Watson. I kissed his lips and his jaw and his neck. I drew my tongue along each clavicle. I experimented with his nipples, finding the precise amount of wetness and suction and pinch that made him squirm and arch and cry out with my name on his lips. I put my face in the pit under each arm and into the centre of his belly and tickled him. I kissed the inside of his elbows and wrists. I kissed his hip bones and around his prick, but not the length of it, even though it was erect and weeping.

I massaged the backs of his knees and pushed his legs up. He spread himself beautifully.

“Frig yourself while I pleasure you. I want to feel your climax round my tongue.”

“Oh, God, Holmes,” he groaned but I heard clumsily fumbling for the jar of slick on the bedside table.

I feasted on him, first with my head turned one way, then the other, searching for just the right angle.

I found it.

I extended my tongue as far as it would reach and tasted him as he clenched and came to crisis in his own hand.

He was a trembling mess. I licked slowly up and down the inside of his thighs and wiped my wet face on his hirsuite skin.

“You are so lovely, Watson,” I murmured.

I lifted my head and watched the rise and fall of his chest. His arms were extended out to his sides. His belly was decorated with thick streams. His eyes were closed, and his lips were twisted in a comical smile I’d only seen on his face when he was well into his cups.

Such a picture of utter debauchery. And utter contentment.

“Come up here and fuck me, you beast,” he slurred.

I grunted and crawled up his body. I reached for the slick and straddled his chest on my knees.

“Care for a show?” I asked cavalierly.

“Fuck!” he replied as I began to stroke myself. “You are…Holmes…words fail.”

“Speechless? I’m flattered.”

“You’re hung like a horse is what you are!”

He stared at me, and I stared at him.

“You like a nice squeeze round the base,” he observed. “I’ll remember that.”

My cheeks warmed.

“If you can still blush after all this, well, that’s saying something.”

It was saying something, but I wasn’t quite certain what. I don’t think Watson rightly knew, either but he seemed charmed, nonetheless.

I kept up my performance for a while longer.

“Watson, I want to add my spend to yours,” I made a gesture at his belly, “but the Alpha won’t hear of spilling anywhere but inside you.”

“It’s all right, Holmes. The night is long. There is time for everything.”

Reassured, I pounced.

Afterwards, Watson pushed up onto his elbows and surveyed the scene, the bed as well as its occupants.

“Goodness, Holmes.”

“That is an understatement, my dear man. We both require a thorough wash, and this bed needs fresh linen.”

“And I think I can now do justice to Mrs. Hudson’s cold collation, which is, no doubt, a banquet fit for a small occupying army. Why don’t you see to your own washing while I arrange the bed, and then we can switch places?”

“It is a wise plan. As much as I would like to tend to you, I fear that doing so will put us right back here. Not that it would be a hardship, but I, too, find myself with an extraordinary appetite. An interlude with hearty repast is called for, forthwith.”

I helped Watson to his feet, and when I was satisfied that he was steady, I busied myself at the washstand.

After I had finished my ablutions, I slipped into my dressing gown and deposited the towel in the hamper with the soiled bed linen. Then I vacated the space for Watson.

“Holmes, did you take more cocaine?”

The question came as a surprise. A knot formed in my chest.

“I did. Not this morning, but scant hours ago, after Gruner’s attack. I feared I would not be able to,” my voice faltered, and I was suddenly awash with shame, “meet your needs.”

Watson tossed a towel into the hamper I was holding and took up his own dressing gown. I was already referring to the garment as his, but it was, in truth, was my own dressing gown. I had, however, already decided that I would cede it to him permanently if he wished to keep it. And a part of me sincerely hoped he would. It suited him, and it suited me to see him wear it.

“No wonder you are hungry, Holmes. You are unsuppressed Alpha on cocaine! You have the yearnings of a caged circus tiger before his daily portion of raw meat.”

“Ferocious I may be, chemically, my dear Watson, but have no fear.” I set the hamper down and fell to my knees. “I am your obedient servant.” I gave a wry nod to the hamper. “And Mrs. Hudson’s, of course, in all domestic matters.”

Watson tied the sash of his dressing gown and laughed. “You think I am afraid of you?” He snorted and closed the space between us. He bent and took my face in his hands and kissed me. “You who have sacrificed so much for me? You who are still sacrificing so much? You would never harm me. Never. But if I dwell too long on your enhanced powers,” he raked his eyes over, “I shan’t start or finish my supper. And I’m famished!”

He grabbed the hamper. I got to my feet. We spoke as one.

“Let’s eat!”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The end of the heat. 
> 
> Warning for fisting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to all the kind and gentle readers, but especially [13jarble](https://archiveofourown.org/users/13jarble) who asked for Old Russian Holmes Omegaverse a year ago. Delays are not denials! And I was very happy to spend time with these two.

Holmes and I weren’t just hungry, we were also parched. Holmes graciously went downstairs twice to refill the pitcher of water that Mrs. Hudson had left us and which we drained like wanderers in the desert.

Holmes and I spoke very little as we ate, and when we did speak, it was only to sing the praises of our fine landlady and her fine table.

Holmes pushed back from the table and gave me a ‘come hither’ smile.

Naturally, I came hither.

Specifically, I settled in his lap, facing him, adjusting the lower half of the dressing gown, Holmes’s mouse brown dressing gown that I was already treating as my own, so that the fabric curtained around me.

Without a word, and without taking his heated gaze from mine, Holmes spread his legs a bit. Then he snaked his left hand under my dressing gown.

He began to play with me. I was reminded of his custom of fiddling with his pipe when he was talking or making a point or trying to buy time with a client.

He must have been thinking along similar lines for he said,

“And after-dinner pipe is set aside in favour of an after-dinner stroke of your sweet cunny. What say you, Watson?”

I grinned, feeling the gush between my legs. “I say you’ll reduce me to water rather than ashes.”

“What a way to burn,” he murmured. “And flood.” He tugged gently at one lapel of the dressing gown and kissed my nipple. The soft, wet touch of his lips and the circling of his fingers made me melt.

“Oh, Holmes!” I said, in much the same manner as a damsel about to be ravished. I squirmed in my seat, resting my hands lightly on his shoulders for support as I arched my back.

“That’s right,” Holmes cooed as I brought my nipple closer to his mouth. He drew his lips back. Viewed directly it might have appeared a bit odd, or even comical, but from my vantage point, looking down with my chin almost to my chest, I could better see his extended tongue, flickering mercilessly, then his bright teeth just before they bit. I could see the thin string of spittle that connected us.

I found it all terribly, terribly arousing, and the evidence of that arousal began to pour forth from me.

Before I knew it, Holmes had three fingers inside me.

I wrapped my arms around him, and he buried his face in my neck. “More,” I whispered.

Then there were four fingers.

I bounced ecstatically and clung to his upper body.

I felt Holmes reach past me and then heard some fumbling about the table, but what he was about exactly, I couldn’t say.

I held his face in both hands and kissed his mouth hard as his fingers stretched me.

Then he wrenched away from me and clamped his mouth round my nipple and began an almost brutal assault on my bud.

I made a high-pitched keening noise and was very nearly out of my mind with lust when I felt something inside me, something that felt like ‘more.’

WHAM!

Then I was up on the table, balanced precariously on the edge. My legs spread instinctively.

“There!” growled Holmes in a voice so low, so feral that I did not recognise it, but the Omega did.

“Look, Watson.”

I looked down between my legs and saw Holmes’s wrist.

Then I realised how full I was and what I was full with. “Oh, fuck!” I moaned.

“My handsome Omega will take a fist when he can’t get a prick!” declared Holmes with a snarl. His eyes were blazing, and the fire was catching.

“Christ, yes!” I wailed. “I’ll take your fist, I’ll take anything, put it in me! Twist it, my Alpha! Make me feel it! God, I want to feel it!”

Holmes turned his hand slowly. The ridges of the knuckles rubbed the walls of muscle and nerves.

“Holmes!” I rocked to and fro.

He grinned wickedly and moved closer and closer, licking his lips like a fairy tale wolf.

And then my prick was in his mouth and I was grabbing his hair and fucking his mouth and his fist was in my cunt and threatening to rend me in two and I was coming and coming and coming and…

_And I was in a garden. A magical garden. I was creeping through a garden. A garden full of mystery. A garden full of wonder. I came upon a mandrake and pulled it up by the root._

_The root screamed. I threw it on the ground._

_And impaled myself upon it over and over._

“Watson.”

It was the second time that night that I awakened with Holmes’s prick inside me. I clenched hard round him in a rhythm that hard and fast was like a drumbeat. I scarcely felt the rest of my body and had no notion of where we were.

“I’m spending again, Watson. Forgive me, my love. Oh, oh, oh…”

I sank back into the garden.

I woke stretched atop Holmes’s body on the sofa.

“There you are,” he said, and even in my state, the relief in his voice was obvious.

“Goodness, Watson. I believe we may have survived Gruner’s revenge only to be done in by our own biologies.”

I chuckled. “Such is often the case, or so I’ve been told.”

I began to lick his chest. He hummed and petted my head gently.

I turned my head and, with a tiny ember of lust warming me, set to suckling his nipple like a greedy infant.

Holmes groaned and held my head in place. After a while, long after the bud had hardened, he hooked an index finger in my mouth.

“Other side,” he groaned.

I applied myself eagerly to the other nipple. When I’d satisfied myself, I pulled off with an obscene, wet pop and said,

“I need something else to suck, Holmes. I need your gorgeous prick. I want that slight bend to the left in my mouth, the girth spread my lips, the head brushing the back of my throat.”

“Watson, on the floor, on your knees.”

He sat up abruptly and I slid to the floor and placed myself between his legs. He curled his fingers round the shaft of his prick so that only the head was visible. He pushed the head between my lips. I sucked. He pulled it out, then pushed it in again, this time a bit more. We progressed in this way until the head was indeed at the back of my throat.

I hadn’t taken all of him, though. I mewled.

“Your choking on it is not arousing, Watson. Quite the opposite,” he said firmly.

And that put that notion right out of my head.

He allowed me to pull off it entirely and, once he’d removed his hand from himself, nuzzle at the either side of the base of his prick, the crease where his legs met his pelvis. Then I slobbered up and down the shaft with extended tongue, letting obscene amounts of saliva coat him and drip onto the rug. He inched further down the sofa, so that I could lap at his sacs.

To anyone else, I would’ve appeared ridiculous or half-mad, but Holmes simply chuckled and petted my head and said,

“Yes, my good Omega. So hungry for your Alpha’s prick. It does you credit and makes me hard as a log.”

I swallowed him down, but when he finally tapped the back of my head and said, in a rumbly voice, “Up. I need to fuck you,” I didn’t do what he expected.

I pulled off, got to my feet, and ran.

He chased after me, of course, and caught me in three strides, then, as anticipated and desired, he threw me on the sofa, pinned me, and fucked me roughly.

When he’d spent, he loomed over me, panting,

“Christ, you’re going to kill me, Watson.”

After that, we took up our former positions and rested for a while in silence. I listened to Holmes’s heartbeat slow from a gallop to a steady lub-dub.

“I suppose we should wash,” I remarked, eventually.

“I did wash us earlier, Watson, but, of course, we have made ourselves filthy again. And I confess I do need to…”

I rubbed my hand back and forth across his lower belly and looked into his eyes.

I understood. I needed it, too.

We went to the privy together. I held his prick as he emptied his bladder. He did the same for me, and as soon as we were back upstairs, I was on my knees sucking him.

“Come,” he said, pulling to my feet. “Let’s to bed where we can arrange ourselves for mutual pleasure.”

And that’s how I ended up straddling his face while I sucked him, my tongue swirling round his shaft and teasing the slit of his prickhead as his tongue lapped up my wetness.

“Holmes,” I groaned after pulling off so that I could lean forward and lick his balls. This movement drew my cunt away from his face.

“Yes, Watson, yes. Such a good Omega.” He was teasing my cunt with his thumb.

“How about I give up my after-dinner pipe for a suck of these?” I teased.

“Then I will become the newest and most active member of the Anti-Tobacco League.”

I laughed. He laughed.

“I’m getting close,” he whispered after I’d resumed my ministrations. “Ride me, please.”

I crawled down his body and pushed myself to kneeling.

When I sank down on his prick, we both sighed aloud.

It was a nice, easy fuck. Nothing of the earlier madness.

“I could do this for hours, Holmes.”

“Be my guest, Watson. The view is,” he rubbed my buttocks, “spectacular.”

“You like my arse?” I asked coyly, looking over my shoulder and batting my eyelashes.

“I _love_ your arse,” drawled Holmes.

I milked him of his seed, then lifted off and turned and said,

“It’s too bad you’ll forget what it looks like. Except in trousers, of course.”

“What?” Holmes sniffed and pushed up on his elbows, eyeing me strangely.

“My arse,” I answered.

“And why in heavens would I forget it?”

“Well, to be honest, I am not certain it is the same for Alphas. But when the heat lifts, the pheromones usually erase an Omega’s memory.”

Holmes’ mouth fell open, then he said, “You won’t remember any of this.”

I smiled what must’ve been a grim smile. “I only remember the bad heats. The normal ones are vague memories at best.”

“And the good ones?”

I chuckled. “I’ve never had a good one. Until now.”

“And the Alphas?” The sharp, jealous edge to the question was not lost on me. It was unlike Holmes.

“I don’t know. I never saw any of them again. Or if I saw them…”

“…you didn’t remember them,” Holmes finished.

I shook my head, then added weakly, “I’m sorry, Holmes.”

He fell back flat onto the bed and stared at the ceiling.

“There’s absolutely nothing to apologise for. You can’t change your biology, but dare I entertain the faint hope that this encounter will be guarded somewhere in the recesses of your person?” The question was directed at the rafters. After a moment, he answered himself, “Yes, I dare.”

I rolled towards him, advancing until I could press my lips to his. “Where is the detective governed by cold reason and logic?” I asked when the kiss broke.

He smiled up at me. “He decided to help a friend and ended up a sentimental old fool with a well-polished knob.”

A heavy silence settled between us. Finally, I broke it.

“Holmes.”

“Yes?”

“Make love to me.”

He enfolded me in his arms and breathed in my ear,

“Whenever has it not been love, Watson?”

His mouth was on my neck and shoulders, and his hands were everywhere, caressing.

“Holmes, Holmes, Holmes…”

After he and I had both come to crisis, I yawned and said,

“I’m tired, Holmes.”

He nodded.

“You may keep at it as long as your body, and my scent, tell you to, but,” I shrugged, “as far as I’m concerned this is ‘good night.’”

“Good night, Watson.” He placed a chaste kiss on my cheek.

I crawled into the bed and fell fast asleep.

* * *

Every muscle in my body ached. It hurt to open my eyelids.

The air reeked of stale sex, but the linen, I noticed, held the faint scent of lavender.

I turned my head. It hurt.

There was Holmes.

In an instant, his eyes were open.

“Hello,” I said, not certain if it was afternoon or evening. “How do you feel?”

“Like I’ve been mauled by a lion. You?”

“Same.”

With stifled moans and harsh wincing, Holmes extricated himself from the bed. “I should like to retire to my own bedchamber, Watson.”

“By all means,” I said, adding hastily and wholly inadequately, “Thank you, Holmes.”

“Not at all.” He tried to make a little bow but with a grimace begged off and limped stiffly out of the room.

Dinner that night was a family affair, meaning Mrs. Hudson and Toby joined us. Mrs. Hudson had managed to get a stack of newspapers, smuggled in past the quarantine with the help of her best friend and fellow landlady Mrs. Turner. Those at the table gorged themselves on the news of the Gruner case while the hero canine below the table feasted on a string of well-seasoned sausages.

As Holmes had anticipated, Essie had not been captured alive, and the three of us expressed our mixed feelings and apprehensions about what she might have revealed the police before her death.

I expressed my profuse gratitude to Mrs. Hudson, which she accepted graciously but added that Holmes and I shouldn’t be surprised to see a sharp hike in our rent the next month for cleaning and replacement of soiled furnishings. Holmes and I accepted this without protest.

Then I turned my gratitude to Toby, and Holmes and Mrs. Hudson chimed in, singing our Papageno's praises.

Toby thumped his tail on the floor and begged for a round of scraps from all, which he was, of course, given.

After dinner, Holmes and I moved to the sitting room and took up our customary armchairs before the fire. Holmes smoked his pipe, and I nursed a brandy.

“The quarantine notice will go down tomorrow morning after a routine inspection of the premises and occupants, and then we can resume our lives. Scotland Yard will come calling, I expect.”

We went on to discuss what we should say and not say to the authorities and other priority items for the following day, such as getting a new supply of suppressants, returning Toby to his owner, and checking on the Weber girls.

When conversation had petered out, I drained my glass and got to my feet and went to the window, then I remembered it was shut and boarded and made a tsk of frustration.

“I can’t see it,” I declared.

“But you know where it is, don’t you?”

“I suppose so.”

I fixed my gaze on where the moon might be, closed my eyes, and prayed.

_O Mother Moon, O Mother Night, thank you for bringing me through this ordeal. Thank you for sending an Alpha to help me bear this burden._

And I thought I heard a reply.

_Silly child, this is a lesson to you to have more faith in yourself, in me, and in those who love you._

I must add an important postscript.

Holmes and I never once referred to the details of the heat, and our outward behaviour towards one another was as it had been. Then, about a week later, after dinner, Holmes presented me with a large, flat gift.

He held onto it even as I took it between my hands, so we stood there, rather awkwardly, as he said,

“It is a dressing gown, my dressing gown that you wore during heat, which I have had cleaned.”

I opened my mouth to thank him, but he forestalled me.

“Don’t thank me. You may not wish to accept it. Wrapped inside the dressing gown, I have placed a written account, a detailed and vivid recollection, of what occurred during the heat. If you wish to know, it is there. I wrote it after you fell asleep on the third night.” He released the box. “You may wish _not_ to know.”

“Holmes, I don’t know why but I remember everything.”

“You do? But you didn’t say anything!”

“Neither did you! I thought you preferred to forget.”

Holmes shook his head, then he sighed, “How stupid I’ve been.”

I clutched the box. “Thank you for my gifts. One is a very beautiful token.” I grinned. “And the other will make for some very salacious bedtime reading.”

“You must share the volume,” cautioned Holmes with mock severity. “Or…”

“Or we could read it together?”

“So many possibilities.”

I tucked the box under one arm and moved closer.

Holmes looked down and whispered,

“My Pamina, there is no trial I would not endure for you. A Child of the Moon and Child of the Sun, surely, there is no more fitting union?”

“Surely,” I agreed. "There is no Tamino like my Alpha."

My lips met his, and it felt like a first kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
